That hasn't been my experience. Even places that pay for employees to get certified expect those employees to study on their own time unless they're sent to formal training.
No need to be sorry for me - I think my story is of the "learning what really matters" sort and my family is much more important to me than where I live is.
When I visited India, there were people who spoke English to me with such a strong accent that I didn't even realize that they were speaking English. Bias against people speaking with an Indian accent is real, but so is the need to facilitate communication.
I want to live in the woods in New Hampshire again some day. It's a beautiful place and also a place where the state and local governments don't make me grind my teeth in frustration all the time*. I would have a house, a lot of land, and no neighbors except for pine trees.
I had most of that already and I left, because I was very lonely - I think I talked to another person face to face about once every few weeks. I thought I would be OK with that because I was used to being alone, but having no family, no friends, and a 100% remote job was too much for me. Apparently even I start going crazy if I am that isolated. Now I live somewhere I really don't like (New York City) but I'm close to my family.
*New Hampshire is a rather libertarian state. Taxes are low but the town where I lived (population 15,000) didn't provide water, sewers, or garbage collection. Many things are legal that aren't legal in most other places. For example, you can drive without insurance, set off fireworks, and do almost anything with a gun except shoot another person. The state motto is "Live free or die," and I would tell my guests that as long as they did one or the other, the state's duty to them would be satisfied.
I've heard that people are often interested in Asian women because they are expected to be subservient. I just think that while women of any ethnicity can be good-looking*, East Asian women are better-looking on average. I wouldn't call that a fetish the way that you do, and I don't think it's somehow worse than a preference for any other sort of physical feature (which I wouldn't call a fetish either unless it was very extreme).
*Good-looking to me rather than in an absolute sense.
I don't think that performing as part of a band is against the spirit of the competition, as long as the devil is still being judged according to his individual contribution. Or would you require him to perform a capella if he was in a singing competition?
And anyway, the devil went before Johnny - if Johnny objected or wanted his own accompaniment, he could have said so.
One way to claim high status within a group is paradoxically to deliberately and publicly do something generally considered to be very low-status within that group. If you're in the "masculine energy" subculture, you're knitting, and you're not trying to hide it then you're either both unpopular and unaware of why you're unpopular... Or you're such a big shot that you really don't have to care what anyone else thinks.
A big shot can't demonstrate that he doesn't have to care what other people think except by doing something apparently unpopular, but of course wanting to prove that he doesn't have to care what other people think is itself evidence that he does care, so he has to like, or appear to like, knitting organically.
One time I met a guy who was the department head at a medical school. He would casually smoke indoors (in the USA during the 21st century). That was very convincing evidence of his unquestionable authority.
If there's a conflict and I get to choose whether or not the side I'm on has killbots, I'll definitely choose killbots. Especially if the enemy has them.
That hasn't been my experience. Even places that pay for employees to get certified expect those employees to study on their own time unless they're sent to formal training.